|
|
Be My Guest is published by Canongate (UK) October 2019,
by PGC (Canada) November 2019,
by Allen & Unwin (Australia) December 2019,
and by Knopf (US) November 2020.
by PGC (Canada) November 2019,
by Allen & Unwin (Australia) December 2019,
and by Knopf (US) November 2020.
The Observer;
Be My Guest
belongs to
Observer’s Books of the Year
"Packed with such brilliance"
Deutschlandfunk Kultur:
Be My Guest
is
Non-fiction Recommendation of the Year
"Great Literature"
Be My Guest
is shortlisted for the
Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2020
The Bookseller:
Be My Guest
is
Non-Fiction Book of the Month, November 2019
Book Description
A meditation on the meaning and limits of hospitality today
The dinner table, among friends, is where the best conversations take place - talk about the world, religion, politics, culture and cooking. In the same way, Be My Guest is a conversation about all those things, mediated through the sharing of food.We live in a world where some have too much and others not enough, where immigrants and refugees are both welcomed and vilified, and where most of us spend less and less time cooking and eating together. Priya Basil invites us to explore the meaning and limits of hospitality today, and in doing so makes a passionate plea for a kinder, more welcoming realisation that we have more in common than divides us.
A meditation on the meaning and limits of hospitality today
The dinner table, among friends, is where the best conversations take place - talk about the world, religion, politics, culture and cooking. In the same way, Be My Guest is a conversation about all those things, mediated through the sharing of food.We live in a world where some have too much and others not enough, where immigrants and refugees are both welcomed and vilified, and where most of us spend less and less time cooking and eating together. Priya Basil invites us to explore the meaning and limits of hospitality today, and in doing so makes a passionate plea for a kinder, more welcoming realisation that we have more in common than divides us.
|
"The book is small but mighty. I know it's going to be something that I turn up to again and again, so that I can think about what wells up in reading it." |
|
Reviews
"I found myself reading Priya Basil's book again, in full. I wish everyone could read it. An intimate, delicious and thought provoking story, told with warmth, humour and generosity."
Nigel Slater, food journalist and author
"The subject of food and its many-threaded associations - of generosity and privation, sharing and hoarding, diversity and denial, pleasure and fear - is the starting point for this absorbing meditation on the interface of self with other in contemporary Europe. Priya Basil writes with honesty, clarity and wit about what it means to be hospitable in a culture of selfishness, and the problems and possibilities of commonality."
Rachel Cusk, author of the Outline trilogy
"Be My Guest offers a rare combination of intellectual sophistication and emotional warmth. I enjoyed it very much."
Sarah Moss, author of Ghost Wall
"A powerful meditation on hospitality which moves between the author’s Indian heritage, upbringing in Kenya and present-day life in Germany. Hospitality, says Basil, can reveal, “the true topography of a society, its landscape of reciprocity, its borders of give and take”. Packed with such brilliance, whether pondering family, food waste or the basic idea of recipes, which “represent one of the easiest, most generous forms of exchange between people and cultures".
Buy it for: your next dinner party"
Gareth Grundy, The Observer
"...if the whole world digested Be My Guest, we’d be OK. It won’t happen, of course, and Basil doesn’t pretend that it will. Chauvinists, xenophobes, climate change deniers — inhospitable people the world over — will detest her compellingly beautiful book."
Alexander Gilmour, Financial Times
"An irresistible amuse-bouche."
Hephzibah Anderson, The Guardian
"In Be My Guest, Priya Basil offers a rich meditation on the nature of hospitality, inviting readers to question the relationship between host and guest and to examine the philosophical contradictions at play."
Sally Aagaard, Times Literary Supplement
"Novelist Basil draws on memoir, storytelling, religion, politics, and philosophy in this delightful and ruminative culinary cultural study. (...) Basil’s powerful intellectual curiosity is sure to intrigue readers."
Publishers Weekly (US)
"Thought-provoking, warm read."
Stacy Smith, Condé Nast Traveller
"Basil begins at the kitchen table and expands to nation states, exploring the ideas of host, guest, and stranger in both intimate and global contexts. Be My Guest offers timely reflections at a moment when many families are politically divided and there is widespread anxiety about immigrants and refugees."
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
"A very elegant meditation. (...) It's celver, it's political, but it's also incredible emotional. (...) I recommend it very highly. It's just a lovely, intellectual and emotional reset to read."
Octavia Bright, Literary Friction
"Beautiful!"
Toronto Star
"Written with poetry and heart, Basil manages to unite huge themes that affect us all while capturing the beauty of sharing."
Francesca Brown, Stylist Magazine
"Buy the beautiful Be My Guest by Priya Basil for anyone you know who has incorrect political thoughts, including yourself. We all need to learn to be more generous hosts."
Sophie Morris, inews.co.uk
"A brave and beautiful exploration into food, race, memory and the very meaning of life. I read it greedily - and so will you."
Meera Sodha, food writer and columnist
"Be My Guest by Priya Basil is a great essay on food and hospitality, on the act of sharing meals together, of family and of migration. It uses food and feeding guests and ideas of hospitality to ask bigger wider questions about the precariousness of immigration and the inhospitable times we find ourselves in. Beautifully deliciously written."
Nikesh Shukla
"A beautiful and personal book."
Fernando Augusto Pacheco, Monocle
"A wonderful essay."
Harper's Bazaar
"Be My Guest is both a heartfelt and convivial read, and an urgently campaigning one, which moves from enticing descriptions of kadhi, a creamy curry that her mother lovingly prepares every time Basil visits; to calling for democracy to <house difference, shelter diversity and welcome novelty> (...) If you and your bookshop want to make a pro-European statement...you couldn't do better than pile this book by the till."
Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller (please read the article here)
"Priya Basil's essay Be My Guest is an exquisite gift for a guest to give at any invitation."
Florian Felix Weyh, Lesart, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
"The Berlin-based citizen of worlds Priya Basil nonchalantly describes in clever essays why our eating and dining habits most directly reflect the state of a society. At once clever, entertaining and hungry for adventure."
Zitty Berlin
"Her book is beautifully and vividly written, but also radical, because ultimately it is about the question of how far we go to let strangers, others - the unknown - into our lives."
Sabine Rohlf, Berliner Zeitung
"Basil's book is many-sided. She skillfully weaves the theme of food with love, friendship, tradition and politics. She creates a very entertaining essay which puts a most timely focus on the meaning of European hospitality and provides an incentive to consider one's own role as guest, host and stranger."
Vivien Vieth, mdr kultur
“Priya Basil has written a book that is simultaneously family history and cultural study, it is a tasty, creamy and spicy as well as intellectual, political and confessional reflection that evolves from the steamy pot of kadhi to develop into one of the most profound questions of today - how to expand our capacities of giving and sharing, how to discover love and charity in the act of invitation, and finally: how to recognize ourselves in the blurred differences between responsible guests and generous hosts.”
Ivana Sajko, author of Liebesroman (winner of the Internationaler Literaturpreis 2018)
"In her inspiring essay, Gastfreundschaft (Be My Guest), Priya Basil examines the notion of an open society."
Stefanie Heidbrinck, ZDF Aspekte
I really enjoyed following Priya Basil's thoughts while reading: now it's about food as a flirting, now about the internet phenomenon #foodporn, two pages before she tells us what it's like with...hospitality in Germany at the moment".
Christoph Amend, ZEIT Magazine
"That it is good and important, especially in times of migration and neo-nationalism, to understand the meaning of hospitality is the central concern of this never pedagogical but rather self-evidently resonant book by the Berlin-based author. When do you feel comfortable as a guest? How devoted can you be as a host? You feel well led and entertained while reading. And you simply get hungry, again and again."
Tageszeitung (taz), literary supplement of the Leipzig Book Fair
"Gastfreundschaft [Be My Guest] is the new essay by the Indian-born writer, who grew up in Kenya and Great Britain, and the vignettes on minor and major culinary excesses are, so to speak, the appetizers with which she guides the readers through a broad reflection on her subject. ...an agile and humane thinker."
Angela Schader, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
"A perceptive little book...Basil is frank and provocative, and Be My Guest passes for...motto and categorical imperative. Hospitality for all."
Exberliner
"Priya Basil heartwarmingly tells of the value of being together at the table, of hospitality and of food. And this at a time when the whole of Europe urgently needs just such a plea for togetherness."
Missy Magazin
"I found myself reading Priya Basil's book again, in full. I wish everyone could read it. An intimate, delicious and thought provoking story, told with warmth, humour and generosity."
Nigel Slater, food journalist and author
"The subject of food and its many-threaded associations - of generosity and privation, sharing and hoarding, diversity and denial, pleasure and fear - is the starting point for this absorbing meditation on the interface of self with other in contemporary Europe. Priya Basil writes with honesty, clarity and wit about what it means to be hospitable in a culture of selfishness, and the problems and possibilities of commonality."
Rachel Cusk, author of the Outline trilogy
"Be My Guest offers a rare combination of intellectual sophistication and emotional warmth. I enjoyed it very much."
Sarah Moss, author of Ghost Wall
"A powerful meditation on hospitality which moves between the author’s Indian heritage, upbringing in Kenya and present-day life in Germany. Hospitality, says Basil, can reveal, “the true topography of a society, its landscape of reciprocity, its borders of give and take”. Packed with such brilliance, whether pondering family, food waste or the basic idea of recipes, which “represent one of the easiest, most generous forms of exchange between people and cultures".
Buy it for: your next dinner party"
Gareth Grundy, The Observer
"...if the whole world digested Be My Guest, we’d be OK. It won’t happen, of course, and Basil doesn’t pretend that it will. Chauvinists, xenophobes, climate change deniers — inhospitable people the world over — will detest her compellingly beautiful book."
Alexander Gilmour, Financial Times
"An irresistible amuse-bouche."
Hephzibah Anderson, The Guardian
"In Be My Guest, Priya Basil offers a rich meditation on the nature of hospitality, inviting readers to question the relationship between host and guest and to examine the philosophical contradictions at play."
Sally Aagaard, Times Literary Supplement
"Novelist Basil draws on memoir, storytelling, religion, politics, and philosophy in this delightful and ruminative culinary cultural study. (...) Basil’s powerful intellectual curiosity is sure to intrigue readers."
Publishers Weekly (US)
"Thought-provoking, warm read."
Stacy Smith, Condé Nast Traveller
"Basil begins at the kitchen table and expands to nation states, exploring the ideas of host, guest, and stranger in both intimate and global contexts. Be My Guest offers timely reflections at a moment when many families are politically divided and there is widespread anxiety about immigrants and refugees."
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
"A very elegant meditation. (...) It's celver, it's political, but it's also incredible emotional. (...) I recommend it very highly. It's just a lovely, intellectual and emotional reset to read."
Octavia Bright, Literary Friction
"Beautiful!"
Toronto Star
"Written with poetry and heart, Basil manages to unite huge themes that affect us all while capturing the beauty of sharing."
Francesca Brown, Stylist Magazine
"Buy the beautiful Be My Guest by Priya Basil for anyone you know who has incorrect political thoughts, including yourself. We all need to learn to be more generous hosts."
Sophie Morris, inews.co.uk
"A brave and beautiful exploration into food, race, memory and the very meaning of life. I read it greedily - and so will you."
Meera Sodha, food writer and columnist
"Be My Guest by Priya Basil is a great essay on food and hospitality, on the act of sharing meals together, of family and of migration. It uses food and feeding guests and ideas of hospitality to ask bigger wider questions about the precariousness of immigration and the inhospitable times we find ourselves in. Beautifully deliciously written."
Nikesh Shukla
"A beautiful and personal book."
Fernando Augusto Pacheco, Monocle
"A wonderful essay."
Harper's Bazaar
"Be My Guest is both a heartfelt and convivial read, and an urgently campaigning one, which moves from enticing descriptions of kadhi, a creamy curry that her mother lovingly prepares every time Basil visits; to calling for democracy to <house difference, shelter diversity and welcome novelty> (...) If you and your bookshop want to make a pro-European statement...you couldn't do better than pile this book by the till."
Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller (please read the article here)
"Priya Basil's essay Be My Guest is an exquisite gift for a guest to give at any invitation."
Florian Felix Weyh, Lesart, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
"The Berlin-based citizen of worlds Priya Basil nonchalantly describes in clever essays why our eating and dining habits most directly reflect the state of a society. At once clever, entertaining and hungry for adventure."
Zitty Berlin
"Her book is beautifully and vividly written, but also radical, because ultimately it is about the question of how far we go to let strangers, others - the unknown - into our lives."
Sabine Rohlf, Berliner Zeitung
"Basil's book is many-sided. She skillfully weaves the theme of food with love, friendship, tradition and politics. She creates a very entertaining essay which puts a most timely focus on the meaning of European hospitality and provides an incentive to consider one's own role as guest, host and stranger."
Vivien Vieth, mdr kultur
“Priya Basil has written a book that is simultaneously family history and cultural study, it is a tasty, creamy and spicy as well as intellectual, political and confessional reflection that evolves from the steamy pot of kadhi to develop into one of the most profound questions of today - how to expand our capacities of giving and sharing, how to discover love and charity in the act of invitation, and finally: how to recognize ourselves in the blurred differences between responsible guests and generous hosts.”
Ivana Sajko, author of Liebesroman (winner of the Internationaler Literaturpreis 2018)
"In her inspiring essay, Gastfreundschaft (Be My Guest), Priya Basil examines the notion of an open society."
Stefanie Heidbrinck, ZDF Aspekte
I really enjoyed following Priya Basil's thoughts while reading: now it's about food as a flirting, now about the internet phenomenon #foodporn, two pages before she tells us what it's like with...hospitality in Germany at the moment".
Christoph Amend, ZEIT Magazine
"That it is good and important, especially in times of migration and neo-nationalism, to understand the meaning of hospitality is the central concern of this never pedagogical but rather self-evidently resonant book by the Berlin-based author. When do you feel comfortable as a guest? How devoted can you be as a host? You feel well led and entertained while reading. And you simply get hungry, again and again."
Tageszeitung (taz), literary supplement of the Leipzig Book Fair
"Gastfreundschaft [Be My Guest] is the new essay by the Indian-born writer, who grew up in Kenya and Great Britain, and the vignettes on minor and major culinary excesses are, so to speak, the appetizers with which she guides the readers through a broad reflection on her subject. ...an agile and humane thinker."
Angela Schader, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
"A perceptive little book...Basil is frank and provocative, and Be My Guest passes for...motto and categorical imperative. Hospitality for all."
Exberliner
"Priya Basil heartwarmingly tells of the value of being together at the table, of hospitality and of food. And this at a time when the whole of Europe urgently needs just such a plea for togetherness."
Missy Magazin
|
|
|
